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Anyone with high IQ kids should check out the Johns Hopkins CTY program. I felt bored, uncomfortable and out of place pretty much my entire pre-college educati

by nugget 10y ago

Anyone with high IQ kids should check out the Johns Hopkins CTY program. I felt bored, uncomfortable and out of place pretty much my entire pre-college educational life, with only a small handful of positive experiences, CTY being the best.

cryoshon 10y ago
agreed a thousand times! as a CTY alumni, my fond memories of being at CTY are of the first time in my life where i was surrounded by equals! it was such a positive experience for me.
- heymijo 10y ago
  I asked the parent comment as well, but would you mind sharing more about your experience(s) at CTY? Thanks!
  - hirsin 10y ago
    I wasn't terribly active in CTY - but the times I was involved it was excellent. I met other kids that could "keep up with me" (with perspective, that actually means "could fill in the blanks since I was bad at explaining"), and had an environment that celebrated success, even if it meant you colored out of the lines. That is to say, if I skipped ahead in programming class and made stuff into functions, I was both congratulated and saw that a couple other kids had done so too. I only recall taking two classes with CTY - a class on fractals and tessellation, and an intro to programming class. They were both excellent, and I made friends and learned in both. Would highly recommend.
heymijo 10y ago
Can you share more about your positive experiences, especially with CTY? I hadn't heard of it before now and your anecdote would help shed light on what I'm reading about. I teach and I'm interested in all things learning.
- laxatives 10y ago
  Its an opportunity to take something like an intro level college course over the summer while in middle school with gifted kids your own age. You need to qualify by taking the SAT and scoring above some threshold and you can only take courses for subjects you scored well in (a high math score doens't qualify you for the language arts courses). A huge number of prominent people in all fields went to CTY. I went in 7th grade to take Algebra over 3 weeks. It was pretty fun and remember being sort of blown away at the final presentations by what other groups had accomplished in their time. My group was pretty boring and just did did problems out of a textbook... Honestly, my biggest memories from that were spending time with other kids (namely girls), especially since this is like peak puberty age. Its also at an age where its easy to make friends living in a dorm for a month. I went to a similar course studying abroad, and it wasn't nearly as good. I took an overview course on physics in high school. It wasn't a math based course, so it just devolved in to pop science. And it was at an older age where people are much more judgemental and I remember thinking I'd prefer avoiding a good number of people for various reasons. I never had that while at CTY.
- aridiculous 10y ago
  Agree with the other commenters. It was fun to live the collegiate life for 3 weeks. Surprisingly, they have strong traditions despite only being in session 6 weeks during the summer. I went two times. You only took one class for three weeks, but you spent A LOT of time in that class and in study sessions. It actually makes college look pretty lightweight to some extent. Other than that, there were physical and social activities. It's fun just bonding with some other odd cats in college dorms. At times, I just wanted to hang out with the other kids instead of going to class. It was summer! I took a cryptology class with a professor who worked at the NSA. We started with the easiest ciphers and progressed through to the German Enigma, which we solved as a final project. The other class was probability and game theory. It didn't do that great of a job clearly, since I'm still terrible at probability. Sidenote: I confess I don't even really believe in probability as a strategy for making singular decisions. I later learned, thanks to the Internet, that this is a debated philosophical problem :) Another year, instead of CTY, I did this lighter weight version of it where you take more classes but each is less time-intensive. I remember thinking it was really easy and not very worthwhile academically. The social life was definitely better.
garyrob 10y ago
My kids both went to CTY in the summers. Both loved it. But my older son literally experienced it as life-altering. He'd been kind of isolated in school, but the wonderful rapport he had with like-minded kids at CTY, and the support they all gave each other, helped him develop social skills and confidence that he was able to use when he returned to school. He ended up having very close friends at his school, as well as keeping in touch with friends he'd made at CTY. I was very impressed when, later, out-of-the-blue, he said that it was CTY that had been the turning point for him. So, parents, if you have gifted kids who are struggling a bit socially, I can't recommend CTY highly enough. Also, they will probably simply have a great time with the academic programs. (And/or can use them to get prerequisites for more advanced classes at their schools, as both my kids did.)

by nugget 10y ago

cryoshon 10y ago

agreed a thousand times! as a CTY alumni, my fond memories of being at CTY are of the first time in my life where i was surrounded by equals! it was such a positive experience for me.

heymijo 10y ago
I asked the parent comment as well, but would you mind sharing more about your experience(s) at CTY? Thanks!
- hirsin 10y ago
  I wasn't terribly active in CTY - but the times I was involved it was excellent. I met other kids that could "keep up with me" (with perspective, that actually means "could fill in the blanks since I was bad at explaining"), and had an environment that celebrated success, even if it meant you colored out of the lines. That is to say, if I skipped ahead in programming class and made stuff into functions, I was both congratulated and saw that a couple other kids had done so too. I only recall taking two classes with CTY - a class on fractals and tessellation, and an intro to programming class. They were both excellent, and I made friends and learned in both. Would highly recommend.

heymijo 10y ago

Can you share more about your positive experiences, especially with CTY? I hadn't heard of it before now and your anecdote would help shed light on what I'm reading about. I teach and I'm interested in all things learning.

laxatives 10y ago
Its an opportunity to take something like an intro level college course over the summer while in middle school with gifted kids your own age. You need to qualify by taking the SAT and scoring above some threshold and you can only take courses for subjects you scored well in (a high math score doens't qualify you for the language arts courses). A huge number of prominent people in all fields went to CTY. I went in 7th grade to take Algebra over 3 weeks. It was pretty fun and remember being sort of blown away at the final presentations by what other groups had accomplished in their time. My group was pretty boring and just did did problems out of a textbook... Honestly, my biggest memories from that were spending time with other kids (namely girls), especially since this is like peak puberty age. Its also at an age where its easy to make friends living in a dorm for a month. I went to a similar course studying abroad, and it wasn't nearly as good. I took an overview course on physics in high school. It wasn't a math based course, so it just devolved in to pop science. And it was at an older age where people are much more judgemental and I remember thinking I'd prefer avoiding a good number of people for various reasons. I never had that while at CTY.
aridiculous 10y ago
Agree with the other commenters. It was fun to live the collegiate life for 3 weeks. Surprisingly, they have strong traditions despite only being in session 6 weeks during the summer. I went two times. You only took one class for three weeks, but you spent A LOT of time in that class and in study sessions. It actually makes college look pretty lightweight to some extent. Other than that, there were physical and social activities. It's fun just bonding with some other odd cats in college dorms. At times, I just wanted to hang out with the other kids instead of going to class. It was summer! I took a cryptology class with a professor who worked at the NSA. We started with the easiest ciphers and progressed through to the German Enigma, which we solved as a final project. The other class was probability and game theory. It didn't do that great of a job clearly, since I'm still terrible at probability. Sidenote: I confess I don't even really believe in probability as a strategy for making singular decisions. I later learned, thanks to the Internet, that this is a debated philosophical problem :) Another year, instead of CTY, I did this lighter weight version of it where you take more classes but each is less time-intensive. I remember thinking it was really easy and not very worthwhile academically. The social life was definitely better.

garyrob 10y ago

My kids both went to CTY in the summers. Both loved it. But my older son literally experienced it as life-altering. He'd been kind of isolated in school, but the wonderful rapport he had with like-minded kids at CTY, and the support they all gave each other, helped him develop social skills and confidence that he was able to use when he returned to school. He ended up having very close friends at his school, as well as keeping in touch with friends he'd made at CTY. I was very impressed when, later, out-of-the-blue, he said that it was CTY that had been the turning point for him. So, parents, if you have gifted kids who are struggling a bit socially, I can't recommend CTY highly enough. Also, they will probably simply have a great time with the academic programs. (And/or can use them to get prerequisites for more advanced classes at their schools, as both my kids did.)